Garrett Gee

A few days ago I was at a SVASE meeting and the topic was on guerrilla PR. This was my first SVASE meeting, so I didn’t really know what to expect. I felt like I was the only bootstrap startup, as everyone I talked to were funded by angels or VCs.

Here are my notes from the meeting:

• Show expertise in the field that you are in
• Start a blog, write articles
• Post comments on other blogs
• Be helpful, solve problems
• Conversational marketing
• Press releases
• Usually a formality; not worth it
• Has anyone gotten calls from one? Nobody said anything
• Use google business and yahoo business
• Blogger / Media embargo
• Print only at x date
• Line up all sources to release in mass
• How to get their attention in the first place?
• digg their stories
• add links to their delicious account
• email them several times
• figure out what they like to do and buy them a present
• in-and-out gift card example
• Don’t launch at a conference
• Expensive
• Competitive
• Cluetrain Manifesto
• Personal branding initiative
• Be available, be useful, be a resource
• Perfect your elevator pitch
• It’s not all about techcrunch
• Find the magic middle
• technorati numbers to find niche bloggers
• smaller numbers, but more passionate
• users will return
• Hire a community manager to find niche groups
• Costs for PR firm
• Going rate is 10k per month plus costs
• Doesn’t give you much
• Lots of spam emails
• Useless reports
• Identify PR goals
• How much traffic per month
• How much registrations per month
• How many external blog posts per month

Overall, the topics discussed was more about online PR, and not guerrilla PR. The presenter gave some decent information bits, but because I wanted guerrilla PR tactics, so I came out a bit disappointed. And as I was leaving, another person mentioned the disappointment on structure and overall topics. Hopefully the next meeting I attend will be more structured and more on topic. 

Update: I took a few pictures at the meeting. They can be viewed at flickr.

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